From Publishers Weekly
When HarperCollins and Ecco Press acquired part of the Black Sparrow imprint early this year, one big prize was the sprawling, long-popular oeuvre of Charles Bukowski (Barfly; Ham on Rye; Love Is a Dog from Hell). Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems, Bukowski's 10th posthumous volume (with several more planned), collects yet more verse about the troubled, garrulous poet's traveling, gambling, thinking, aging, working, not working, romancing, drinking, self-mythologizing and even eating ("I opened a can of roastbeef hash/ and some pickled beets") as he fought through his blue-collar, beer-hall L.A. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Mother o' mercy, is this the end of Buk, nearly nine years after his death? Well, no, for his new publisher--Black Sparrow Press proprietor John Martin having retired and closed that long-lived, successful, and important small literary house--promises four best-of collections, their contents handpicked by Buk himself. But yes, apparently, it is the end in terms of all-new collections. And a fine valedictory this is, one of the most purely enjoyable entries in the Bukowski canon. The poems in it are all as autobiographical as their not-Bukowski "I" referent, Buk's perpetual stand-in--drinkin', screwin', horse-playin', typin' Henry Chinaski-- allows. As usual, they are chock-full of gripes, curses, petty rebellions, cocked snooks, long-suffering mutterings, Pyrrhic victories, and the other expressions of malcontent that were Buk's stock-in-trade for some 40 years. Perhaps he was a rhetorician, a ranter, more than a real poet, but for sure he was a humorist, one of the greatest in American literature, in prose as well as verse. If you aren't amused by him, what good are you? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
from "neither Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane" young young young, only wanting the Word,
going mad in the streets and in the bars,
brutal fights, broken glass, crazy women
screaming in
your cheap room,
you a familiar guest at the drunk tank, North
Avenue 21, Lincoln Heights
sifting through the madness for the Word, the
line
the way,
hoping for a check from somewhere,
dreaming of a letter from a great editor:
"Chinaski, you don't know how long we've been waiting for you!"
no chance at all.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From "neither Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane"

young young young, only wanting the Word,
going mad in the streets and in the bars,
brutal fights, broken glass, crazy women
screaming in
your cheap room,
you a familiar guest at the drunk tank, North
Avenue 21, Lincoln Heights

sifting through the madness for the Word, the
line
the way,
hoping for a check from somewhere,
dreaming of a letter from a great editor:
"Chinaski, you don't know how long we've been waiting for you!"

no chance at all.

About the Author:

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994 at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). His most recent books are the posthumous collections What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), and Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & SheriMartinelli, 1960-1967 (2001).